Miss Queen of the World

I don’t have any cats. However, this fine Sunday morning, I have two helping me to write my blog. The struggle is real. The cats wants me to stroke them all the time. Or alternatively sit very very still so they can sleep in peace. Speaking of peace, I hope that world peace is something that you’re into. It is certainly something I’m into. And it’s certainly something that beauty pageants are into. Surely, for all beauty pageants' bad press, world peace can’t be that bad of a thing.

Good morning kitty cats!

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a beauty pageant before. I have. More than one. When I was young, I was ignorant and foolish. I thought there was only one of these things. Unfortunately, I underestimated the event organisers creativity in coming up with synonymous names for possible crowns that one could win. Did you know that Miss World New Zealand, Miss Universe New Zealand, Miss University New Zealand, Miss Supermodel New Zealand, Miss Earth New Zealand, Miss Grand New Zealand, Miss Inter-Continental New Zealand (to name but a few) are all ‘a thing’? Very early on in my beauty pageant education, I gave up on keeping track of which beauty pageant was which and have, ever since, called them all Miss Queen of the World, because it's all the same thing. More or less. And details, details.

Leaning Tower of Sky Tower

I guess not all of you know why I have any experience with beauty pageants at all. It is true that I, personally, am not that kind of girl. The reason for my involvement is that one of my sisters’ is a Beauty Queen. I have two sisters and each are ludicrously awesome in their own right.

So last night, I was in the Supercity (Auckland) at Miss Queen of the World. The great thing about these beauty pageants though is that I feel like there is always drama. Drama, drama, drama. My drama started before I even left very-much-less-dramaful-Dunedin. You see, the vegetarian plane in which we were supposed to be flying north,  ingested a bird. Apparently the engine is not a good place for a (now somewhat mince-meat) bird to get stuck. Anyway, the plane required surgery and thus, I, with my delightful parents, was stuck at the Dunedin International Airport for four hours. Drama!

Beauty pageants. They’re exactly what you expect. And potentially a bit more (if that’s possible).

A real, live beauty pageant

You know how I said that the struggle was real because I had a cat sitting on my lap; well the struggle is a million times more real for a Beauty Queen. Especially a Beauty Queen on a budget. This one time, the now Miss Queen of the World bought her hair extensions from the $2 Shop (apparently the real ones are very expensive). She put them in and was curling them (in conjunction with her normal hair) when the plastic substitute extensions melted. Personally, I think it’s a three way tie for brilliantness in that the hair was from the $2 Shop; the hair melted and everybody in a 100 m radius would have had to put up with the smell of burnt plastic for the rest of the afternoon (my favourite!). So you see, a lot of important life lessons can be learnt from beauty pageants. Don’t be stingey. Especially when it comes to your hair.

The racey dance number

Other struggles of being a beauty queen include having lipstick all over your face. The make-up artists make your lips look bigger by painting red around your lips. Personally, I am affronted that their lips aren’t actually that big. Here I was, worrying about the minuscule size of my own lips. If you share my concern, fear not; the lips on stage aren’t real (necessarily)!

And oh my goodness, all the smiling. Like, all the smiling.  Seriously, what are they so happy about? All of them! So happy! Did world peace just become a legitimate thing? Like, North Korea and Russia too? Who knew?

Miss Queen of the World

I think that everybody’s favourite (or at least most entertaining/cringe worthy) part of the night was the question-answer. I shit you not, the question wast:

Consider the recent phenomenon, the so called “Islamic State,” where vulnerable young people have been persuaded to become terrorists and/or suicide bombers.

How would you advise governments and community leaders to address this abnormality in order to address and eliminate the root cause that have brought about this anti-survival anomaly?

Seriously? What. The. Shit?

We take this seriously.

Very seriously.

I happen to know that Miss Queen of the World has attended Toastmasters for the last couple of years. Public speaking is kind of her thing. And she’s actually rather intelligent. So naturally, she hit this one out of the park. It’s not that the other contestants are actually unintelligent (although it may have looked like that for a few rather painful moments), but more that the question was (and is) stupidly hard. Of the girls that actually managed to string a sentence together, a fair few of the answers came very close to ‘world peace.’ Despite wanting to find this great, in a rather sadistic way, it’s traumatic. Promise.

Mt Eden

I have had a few years, and a viewing of (the great, wonderful, epic and highly fantastic) Little Miss Sunshine to mentally and emotionally prepare myself for the strangeness of beauty pageants. This time around, the peculiarity of it all didn’t hit until my sister voiced her primary concern after becoming Miss Queen of the World to be:

‘How am I going to get my crown home in one piece?’

And so the madness continues. 

Skycity

World Peace, everybody!